AMD wants to support USB 3.0

Executives from AMD have been seen wining and dining their opposite numbers at Renesas Electronics in a bid to do a licensing deal on USB 3.0 technology. Renesas was merged into NEC and is the only manufacturer to have approval from the USB organisation.

According to Digitimes, AMD wants to integrate USB 3.0 support in its upcoming Hudson D1 southbridge chipsets. Quoting its reporter's typewriter, deep throats in the notebook industry, who it forgets to name, said that AMD is dead keen to get the technology under the bonnet of the new range.

Tthe Hudson D1 chipset will be introduced for AMD's 40nm Ontario APUs that are set to be shipped in the fourth quarter of 2010. The new platform is targeted the ultra-thin notebook and netbook markets.

AMD will launch Llano-based processors for its mainstream desktop and notebook segments in 2011. It seems likely that it wants USB 3.0 support in all of them.

In doing so it will steal the march on Intel. Gigabyte told us at this year's Computex confirmed that Intel's USB 3.0 chipset won't hit vendors or anyone else until 2012.